


Lonely at the Top

by Fairleigh



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Loneliness, Pining, Possibly Pre-Relationship, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-01-04 17:43:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18348554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairleigh/pseuds/Fairleigh
Summary: It’s lonely at the top. Especially when there’s nobody to help you defend your position there.





	Lonely at the Top

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LearnedFoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LearnedFoot/gifts).



It’s lonely at the top. Especially when there’s nobody to help you defend your position there.

Kylo Ren is strong in the Force. There are none stronger in the First Order. None besides him who can stop a blaster bolt in midair, none besides him who can snatch thoughts from an unwilling mind, none besides him who can choke the life out of a person or break that person’s body against the nearest console panel without even having apply a direct touch. Everyone knows that. Even General Hux … if on occasion he does temporarily forget himself. That Kylo Ren should succeed Snoke as Supreme Leader is only natural. Obvious. Inevitable.

Ha, if only! The challenges to his authority began almost immediately. The direct ones were easy to put down, since all he had to do was _put the challenger down_. After that, the challenges became more subtle: political machinations and convoluted alliances between heavy industry and organized crime to appoint a more biddable figurehead for the First Order, other assorted attempts to undermine the rank and file confidence in his leadership. He’s already survived more covert assassination attempts than he can count.

Call it a recipe for the mother of all stress headaches. Pain, bright and sharp, like vibroblades jammed into his temples and between his eyebrows. For fuck’s sake, his head hasn’t hurt this badly since he had _Rey_ in it!

Rey. The last time he saw her was on Crait, right before she shut the door and severed the bond between them.

He misses her. Terribly.

~*~*~

Ben Solo was a shy and socially awkward child who had trouble making friends.

Maybe it would’ve been easier if he’d had siblings. Maybe it would’ve been easier if they hadn’t had to move around so much, from planet to planet to planet, following the New Republic Senate wherever it decided to seat itself. Maybe it would’ve been easier if he’d been a more handsome child, if his ears hadn’t stuck out quite so much.

He is still self-conscious about his ears. But he doesn’t know for certain, not really. He has no counterfactuals with which to compare.

What he does know for certain was that it didn’t help that his parents were heroes of the Rebellion, or that his uncle was _the_ Luke Skywalker. And it didn’t help that he was strong in the Force. No, far from helping Ben make friends, impromptu levitations and mind-reading made the peers in his age group fear and avoid him. That he couldn’t always control his powers only made everything worse — especially when he became angry.

Rejection only made him angrier, which only made his powers even more difficult to control, which only resulted in more rejection, which only made him angrier, which —

In short, it was a vicious cycle.

When Uncle Luke offered to train him as a Jedi, Ben thought that it would free him from his personal miseries. Everyone in the entire freaking galaxy loved and admired Uncle Luke, after all! If Ben learned how to become like Uncle Luke, everyone in the entire galaxy would love and admire Ben too … right?

~*~*~

Nope. _Wrong_.

Life at Luke’s little Jedi school was just as horrible as it had been everywhere else. Ben wasn’t like any other Force-sensitive; he was more powerful than the rest of the students, and even untrained, his power rivaled that of Luke himself. In short? He was still alone. Even Luke kept him at a distance.

Is it any wonder that he defected to Snoke and the Knights of Ren? At least with them, he didn’t have to play nice or pretend that he was anything less than the most powerful of a new generation of Force users. Ben Solo could become Kylo Ren, and Kylo Ren could resign himself to this new reality and convince himself — or at minimum _pretend_ — to revel in it: If he was going to be alone, at least he’d be alone on top.

And then he wasn’t alone anymore.

At first, he didn’t know what to think. He was annoyed when she appeared while he was receiving medical treatment for the wounds _she_ had inflicted, thank you very much. He felt almost _violated_ when she appeared while he was getting undressed for a shipboard sleep cycle.

But his feelings started to change. He liked her attention, her fascination with him, her confidence in what she considered his essential goodness. And then, Snoke’s throne room, when they fought together like one brain with two bodies — _and won_ —

He felt sublime. And he didn’t ever want it to end.

~*~*~

Rey ended it. She’d shut the door. Kylo Ren had done nothing. Hell, he doesn’t really understand _how_ she’d been able to do it in the first place.

Besides, if he were honest with himself, he would have died himself first before he’d have ever let go of her again.

Loneliness had always made Ben Solo lash out; that self-same crushing sense of isolation is always what has fueled Kylo Ren’s anger. Now, though, he knows what it means to have had someone to fill the hollow spaces in his spirit … and then to have lost her again. What Kylo Ren feels is far, far worse than anything either he or Ben Solo has ever previously experienced.

He’s lucky his reputation for volatility and random bursts of rage precedes him. He pretends everything is business as usual. He pretends his new, unforced errors of judgment are all part of a bigger, master plan that only he can understand. He pretends he is impervious to emotional pain. He pretends he doesn’t feel like he’s dying, a bit more every day, deep inside of him. He pretends he’s forgotten how to cry. He pretends he is cold, dark stone.

He is not cold, dark stone. Not when he warms himself each night to his memory of Rey’s heat and light.

Then, she returns to him. The whys and wherefores don’t matter. All that matters is that she’s returned — and she’s opened the door again.

Their bond flares to life between them once more, and miracle of miracles, he isn’t alone.


End file.
